Offside (50 page)

He opened up a case full of hypodermic needles.

“What is that?” I asked hesitantly.

“Adrenalin in this one.” Steven held up a needle. I shuddered a little. “This one contains testosterone.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked over to Dad.

“Really?”

“It makes perfect sense,” Dad said, “though it is the reason some whinier PTs don’t care for Steven’s work. Testosterone builds muscle. You need to build muscle so you can play again.”

“Wouldn’t there be some…um…side effects or something?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Dad said. “Maybe your dick will get bigger.”

They both thought that was pretty damn funny. I glared up at them from my chair.

“It can’t possibly be any bigger,” I snarked back at them. I wasn’t so sure I agreed with Dad about side effects, but he was leaning against the wall with his hands crossed over his chest, and arguing with him wouldn’t have been advisable. He was definitely teetering on the edge.

The beginning of the session wasn’t unlike those I had been through with Danielle—hard and painful, and before it was done, I ended up with sweat pouring down my back. This was different though—we weren’t done.

“Keep going!” Steven yelled. He hadn’t just “spoken” since we started; he only yelled. “Ten more! And then ten more after that if you start slowing down!”

It wasn’t even the pain in my arms that bothered me—I’d done enough weightlifting to understand how that felt—but my side ached where the gash was, and it was becoming harder to breathe. Needless to say, I did slow down, and about sixteen more tries later, my arms gave out, and pain rippled through my torso. The small hand weights fell to the ground.

“Is this all you can do?” Steven asked, his voice filled with contempt. He picked up the weights and handed them back, one in each hand, but my right arm just dropped it again. He growled at me and then went over to his bag for a hypodermic needle.

“What is that?” I asked as I tried to sink back into the chair.

“We already went over this!” he screamed at me. “Adrenaline, so you can keep going and get the results you need! This is only your arms! Just wait until we get to your legs!”

Before I could protest, he jabbed the needle into the crook of my elbow and pushed down on the plunger.

Almost immediately, my heart began to pound.

My breath came in pants.

My head started to swim.

Steven put the weights back into my hands, and my fingers gripped them tightly, reflexively.

“Twenty more!” he commanded. “Now!”

Though my hands were shaking, my fists were closed too tightly to drop the weights again, and my arms—though in protest—did as he demanded.

As I lay in my bed twenty minutes later, my heart was still pounding in my ears. My hands were still shaking, and my mind was flying.

I wanted Nicole.

I wanted my Dad to walk into the room so I could haul back and punch him.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to slow down my breathing, but the gasping was impossible to control. I was dizzy, and when I closed my eyes, I felt like I was going to throw up. I turned my head a little so my nose was up against Nicole’s pillow, stared out the small window, and begged the stuff to make its way out of my system.

My old buddy The Bard once said, “In time we hate that which we often fear.” Somehow, I couldn’t agree with him more.

Now please, please make it stop…

“Stop your whining,” Steven said. He used his head to gesture over to his little bag full of needles and shit. “Or do you need a little help?”

I shook my head and did another set of lifts as my arms burned, and my side felt like it was going to split right back open.

Could that happen?

I felt a shudder run through me but wasn’t sure if it was due to the weights in my hands or the thought of ripping open the gash down my side. I pushed on because there wasn’t a choice. Dad was watching from the kitchen, and as I was finishing up, he took his buzzing phone out of his pocket and walked out of earshot.

“Where are your charts from yesterday?” Steven asked as I sat like a limp noodle in my wheelchair.

“I think Dad put them in his study,” I replied.

“Well, go get them! I need to do some comparisons.”

I took a big breath and wondered if my workout-fatigued arms would even be able to wheel me over the hardwood floors at this point. Somehow, I managed to get myself down the hallway, slowly, and to the door of Dad’s study. I reached out and turned the handle and then pushed it open so I could wheel myself inside.

I could hear Dad’s voice from the kitchen rise and intensify though I couldn’t quite make out his words. Something about how no one’s going to try to pull that shit, and he was the goddamned mayor or something. I heard Steven responding but couldn’t make out his words, either.

I went through the doorway, trying to ignore whatever the hell was going on in the other room. I just didn’t have the energy.

It was rare for me to go into this room. It’s not like it was ever specifically off limits or anything, it just…didn’t invite company, I guess. The walls were painted to look like red leather, and one whole wall was lined with bookshelves containing medical books and journals. There was even an authentic human skeleton in the corner, enclosed in a large, glass case.

It gave me the willies.

The place was also full of all kinds of shit. There were books stacked everywhere, a couple of trees’ worth of papers, and tons of dust. There were staplers and hole-punches and letters on a table next to a wing-backed chair and one small corner dedicated to Real Messini merchandise, including a little Real Messini garden gnome.

Okay, the gnome was actually creepier than the skeleton, if you asked me. The skeleton didn’t have any eyes, but that gnome always seemed to be watching me.

Ignoring the peering black eyes of the plastic figure, I maneuvered the chair around the side of Dad’s desk and grabbed the file sitting on top. I flipped it open to make sure it was the right one and then closed it and started trying to back up around Dad’s desk chair and the desk itself.

Dad and Steven were definitely yelling at each other now. I still couldn’t make out the words. I hoped maybe Dad was going to be pissed off enough to fire him.

I should be so lucky.

I held tight to the file folder so nothing would fall out as I tried to get out of the small space. It wasn’t easy—the space was too tight for the chair to fit, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t come close to bumping into the skeleton. That would just freak me out. I backed up and pulled forward and eventually turned myself part way around so I could get out.

Well, almost.

I knocked right into the side of the desk, and three books fell off from where they were stacked. They knocked into a bunch of papers, which fell on the floor. I tried to back up to reach them and banged right into the desk again. More books fell, taking more papers with them.

“Dammit!” At this rate, I was going to wear myself out picking up all this shit before Steven even got round two started on me. I heard the front door open and slam shut and half prayed he was getting fired right now.

I reached down and grabbed at the stack of papers. It put a bit of strain on my side to reach down like that, but I managed. I stacked them up along with the books and reached over to fully close the desk drawer that had been jarred open in the process. Something very familiar caught my eye as I reached for the drawer’s handle, and instead of closing it, I opened it a little more.

It was my sketchbook.

I glanced over at the door, but there was no one there, so I reached in and grabbed the sketchbook. I turned it over and over in my hands and then flipped through it. All the sketches of Nicole were gone, but the ones of my mom were all still there as well as a couple soccer sketches. I looked around my chair to see where I might be able to hide it when an envelope fell out from between the pages and landed in my lap.

I reached for it and flipped it over, noting my Dad’s name and our address on the front and that the stamp had been cancelled in Chicago, Illinois. There wasn’t a return address, and my curiosity got the better of me.

I reached in and pulled out the letter.

Dr. Malone,

When we last met, it appeared Thomas would be playing soccer professionally. At that time, I agreed I would not reach out to him even though it is my right since he is now eighteen. Since then, I have heard of his accident and injuries.

You have to let me contact him. I have never even seen him, since that’s how Fran wanted it, but he is my biological son. Our understanding was always that if he played professionally, like you wanted, then I would not approach him. If he is no longer walking, it makes sense, now more than ever, for him to know who I am and to learn that he has other options.

You can’t keep me from him forever, Lou. You said he was still sketching, which means he already has possibilities there. He can’t play soccer if he can’t walk, and I can offer him a whole different path in life.

Contact me before the end of the month to arrange this, or I will reach out to him myself.

Thomas Gardner

I stared at the paper in my hands.

I read it over and over and over again as Shakespeare’s words echoed in my head: “The voice of parents is the voice of gods.” My heart was beating as if Steven had just given me another shot, and I knew—I just
knew
—from the words on the unassuming piece of paper in my hands, I had found my salvation.

My arms felt as if someone were running ice cubes down them, and my toes seemed to be flexing involuntarily. I realized I wasn’t breathing when my chest started to burn, and I took a quick breath to fill my body with oxygen.

I read the letter again.

Little tiny clicks seemed to be going off in my head, and like the tumblers of a complicated lock, the combination of events slowly fell into place.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

I jumped and practically threw myself out of the wheelchair altogether. Dad was standing in the doorway, and his eyes went from my face to the sketchbook in my lap and the letter in my hands.

I just stared at him like a dumbass.

“I asked you a question,” he repeated.

“I was…getting my chart…” I stammered. I looked down at the letter in my hands and then slowly raised it as I looked at him. “Dad…?”

His eyes seemed to glaze over as he stared at the paper in my grasp. He licked his lips and slowly inhaled.

“Give me that,” he demanded though his tone was not as full of anger as I would have anticipated. My chest tightened as he reached out his hand, but I didn’t offer him the letter.

“You’re not…” My breaths started coming faster as I tried to figure out what to say. “You’re not my…”

“Shut up!” he yelled. He took a step toward me, and I gripped the letter tighter. “I am your father! I’m the one who raised you—sacrificed for you! I gave up my fucking career for you! He did nothing for you! Nothing! It was all me!”

The words tumbled around in my head—
I am your father
. I couldn’t help but hear them in James Earl Jones’ voice. I watched Dad’s face turn red in anger but couldn’t bring myself to feel any guilt or fear from his rage. I just felt numb toward him. When had he ever been a father to me? Before Mom died, maybe he could have made the case, but now? No. Definitely not now.

“You never told me,” I said quietly. “Why?”

“Why should we have?” I realized it was the first time he had referred to both himself and my mother together for a long, long time. “He was nothing—nothing to her and nothing to me. He is nothing.”

I remembered years ago, when I was a very young child, wondering why I only looked like Mom. I remembered her public memorial service—held a month after her death—and the lines of people who stopped to pay their respects. I remembered seeing Dad with a man who had the same color hair as mine and wondering if he was one of Mom’s relatives. I had asked Dad about him, and he had blown off my question.